Secrets of the firelight writer

I suppose I could just keep it a secret and let you go on thinking that my eyes are closed in my author picture because I’m looking into the bright flames of a campfire at night.

But it’s bound to come out eventually, so it might as well be on my terms.

It wasn’t easy for me to come up with a “picture of the author” that I could use on a website, particularly a website for a book aimed at ultra-picky urban fantasy and dystopia readers. That’s because, to put it bluntly, I don’t look very cool.

For one thing I’m pushing 39, my hair is going a bit gray and I’m too eco-friendly to go in for harsh dyes. But that’s not the real problem. It’s my eyes.

I don’t personally think my eyes look that bad. But then I don’t have an eye-contact obsession, the way most people on the planet do. I have never been able to understand that common human fetish exactly. Eyes are beautiful. At least they are when I can gaze at them up close in a photograph. But I have never experienced that instant connection that happens when people make eye-contact.

That’s because I can’t see well enough. I’m not totally blind, but close enough for most purposes.

I can’t see anything but smudges of darker color where the eyes should be when I look at someone’s face during a conversation.

I’m told that the eyes are the window to the soul.

So, what does that make me? I guess I am a house with shutters. I don’t mean to be. I love intimate connection with another person on a soul level--through words and voice or through the touch of a friend’s hand. But to those who are used to reaching that connection through the eyes, I must be frustrating and off-putting.

The problem with pictures of me is that not only do my eyes not make eye-contact correctly. They also don’t open all the way. This apparently comes from a lifetime of squinting to see a world that is forever out of focus.

While I don’t think squinty eyes are that terrible to look at, I don’t want to distract people who I don’t know yet with that little detail. I want to be seen first as a whole. And I would like you to try reading some of my books, before you leap to conclusions based on one little physical characteristic.

So, that’s why I spent several hours with two photographers, a tripod and a Summer Solstice fire, struggling to catch a glimpse of me that could be authorly without being retouched in photoshop. I love the result, though whether or not it makes me look cool is a matter of debate.

Still the issue itself is on topic.

The Kyrennei Trilogy takes that murky issue of what is cool, who sets beauty standards and who makes the unwritten rules of society and pinpoints it with a laser beam.

I don’t look cool--not by the standards of 2014 pop culture, not by the even by the more middle-aged standards of parenting-as-a-competitive-sport mommy clubs, and certainly not by the hyper-beauty-conscious standards of urban fantasy.

But if you ever wondered about who makes the rules, I’ll can tell you. Read this.

The story isn’t about me anyway. It’s about you because if you read The Soul and the Seed, you’ll be going on a trip to the other side of the mirror. And I’ll be staying home in my cozy little gingerbread house and writing furiously to keep you there.

P.S. This is my first post on the Rebel with a Pen blog. This is where I plan to mouth off a bit, give good reasons to get riled up, spread the word about people doing amazing and hopeful things and find a path to spiritual healing. At its deepest, hidden core The Kyrennei Series is about healing. It is about the hard edges of the world and about how we find the strength to stand for our own souls. And so, as a Rebel with a Pen, I’m going to keep doing just that.